


Alluvium - Chapter 9

by AWizardWithoutHerStaff



Series: Alluvium - Uprooted from Sarkan's POV [9]
Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26824942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWizardWithoutHerStaff/pseuds/AWizardWithoutHerStaff
Summary: Ludmila. I’d locked even her name away, buried it as if that would allow me to deny its existence. But these things only put down roots, like something of the Wood, exerting their influence from a place we can no longer see.Kasia is corrupted beyond saving, and yet our hero can only watch as Agnieszka finds this out for herself. Unsure of how to help or comfort her, Sarkan ends up remembering a time when he, too, searched for a cure to the corruption.Chapter 9 of Uprooted from Sarkan's point of view.This is a rewrite of Uprooted from Sarkan's point of view – it follows the story of Uprooted very closely and will spoil stuff if you've not read the book. The characters, the story, and dialogue between Agnieszka and Sarkan belong to Naomi Novik – I've added some extra, but most of the dialogue is NN's and not mine.
Relationships: Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan, The Dragon | Sarkan/Ludmila
Series: Alluvium - Uprooted from Sarkan's POV [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693372
Comments: 40
Kudos: 83





	Alluvium - Chapter 9

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi!
> 
> Here is Chapter 9! It is still very angsty (we are in that part of the book, I guess! I love this bit so much, so it's hard to do it justice). This was a weird chapter to do because so much of it is dialogue in the book. I very, very much do not want to do a thing where I've put something online where people can read NN's text without owning the book, so I cut a lot of it out and did it through Sarkan's memories instead. Obviously, the dialogue for this bit is wonderful, but I'm going to assume all of you have read it/can run off and read it, so you just have to insert those bits in yourself <3
> 
> Thank you again to those of you who've been writing honestly some of the most beautiful comments a person could ever hope to receive. This month as been a rough one, and your lovely comments have honestly kept me going. You guys are the greatest.
> 
> Sorry again that it's taken a whole month to get it here! Truthfully, that's probably just how it's going to be for a bit. In exciting news, I have been given the most amazing writing opportunity (hurrah!) but it means that I have less time in general at the moment. But I 100% intend to keep going with this, and I'm going to _try_ for monthly updates.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me, lovely people. I appreciate it so much <3 Stay safe and well! xx

# Alluvium

## Chapter 9

As soon as we stepped out through the wall, Agnieszka pushed herself out of my grip, and I could not stop her from sliding away from me and down onto the floor. I stood uselessly by her shoulder as she pulled in on herself, her arms wrapped around her knees and her shoulders hunched forwards, as if pressed beneath an unbearable weight.

When she turned her face up to mine, it was hard to look back at her, at all her broken determination written across her face. ‘There’s a way. There’s a way to get it out of her.’ I could hear in her voice that she didn’t believe it. ‘That spell you used on me—’

‘No.’ This, at least, was something I could answer. ‘Not for this. The purging spell barely worked even on you. I warned you. Did it try to persuade you to harm yourself?’

The shudder swept over her in a wave. ‘You.’

I nodded and looked away. Of course. ‘It would have liked that: persuade you to kill me, then find some way to lure you back to the Wood.’

‘What _is_ it?’ she asked, a shadow passing in front of her eyes. ‘What is that – _thing_ inside her? We say the Wood, but those trees— those trees are corrupted, too, as much as Kasia. That’s where it _lives_ , not what it is.’

As usual, Agnieszka had stumbled blindly into the heart of it, unpicking mysteries with her hands that I had wondered at for decades.

‘We don’t know,’ I said. My gaze drifted to the heavy walls surrounding us, to the thick grey stone cast in an otherworldly blue light. My eyes followed the runes that traced their way from one side of the tomb to the other, symbols etched so deep that they hadn’t even begun to fade over the centuries; they’d probably still be here long after we were gone. ‘It was here before we came. Perhaps before they were.’

Perhaps even they didn’t know what it was. Or perhaps they knew all too well. All we knew was that they had died fighting it: that this was all that was left of them. And it was a tomb.

_And something else_ , my mind added, drawn once again to the words that sat apart from the others: entrapment, imprisonment, holding. Strange words for a tomb, unless they expected their occupant to rise again from the grave. Perhaps the Wood had taken him before he died? We could never know. All I could hope was that they would add their power to mine; we had a common enemy, after all.

It took me a long time to say it, to force the heavy words from my chest, knowing exactly how much they’d hurt her. ‘Are you ready to let me end this? Most likely there’s nothing left of her to rescue.’

The question hung between us, and I’m not sure I breathed as I waited for her answer.

‘Not yet,’ she said so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘Not yet.’

She got to her feet before I could offer to help, brushing ineffectually at the dust on her dress with trembling hands. She mounted the stairs in much the same way: detached, alone, just beyond my reach. I followed carefully behind her, watching for any sign that the exhaustion might finally overtake her. With a sharp pang, I was reminded of that very first day, after I had brought her back to the tower, when she had collided so violently with me on the stairs. I’d caught us both an instant before we fell; I remembered my outrage, the shock of that contact with her. Now, all I wanted to do was to reach out and keep her from falling. This time it wasn’t so easy.

The weeks and months dragged by. Time had slowed to malignant, torturous pace. Waiting is always exhausting, and that was all I was doing: waiting for her to finally give up.

She knew it, too. When she wasn’t tearing through my books or demanding another of my scrolls, she avoided me, keeping her eyes firmly away from mine. There was hardly a moment where she was not buried in magic, steeped in spells she hardly understood. She was ignoring every one of my warnings: throwing workings to the wind, diving into tomes many times more advanced than any we had opened before, and stretching her strength until it frayed away at the edges. She was relentless, furious, and heartbroken. I said nothing. When she asked, I handed her what she wanted; when she dropped an incantation, I caught it before it collapsed. I did my best to keep her directed away from the most dangerous of my magics, but mostly I let her try whatever she needed to. I’d let it come this far: the only person who could end this now was Agnieszka.

When we went to see _it_ , she always walked down with a resolve that felt somehow painful to me – so determined even when she carried with her only small fragments of hope and magic. I think, in truth, there were times she just wanted to see the girl, to take these last chances to look upon her beloved friend. It was a kind of torture in itself: the thing was eating her away, leaving her gaunt and grey, all of the life gone from behind its eyes. It would sing Agnieszka’s name, over and over, its voice always perfectly discordant to the music of Agnieszka’s own magic. Afterwards, Agnieszka would walk back up the stairs, ahead of me always, her face turned up and away as if that meant I couldn’t see her tears.

Still I said nothing.

Spring crept back to Polnya, turning the sky heavy and grey. Clouds pooled in the valley, clinging to the tops of trees with thin, twisted tendrils. The wind hurled the rain up against the tower in sharp blasts of pattering raindrops, a sound like someone throwing handfuls of gravel against the glass. And the Wood stirred. The cold sleep of winter bled away from it, and through my sentinels I could see it coming alive – see the skittering movement in the shadows. It was awake, watchful, waiting for one of us to make a mistake.

I was stood at the window in my laboratory, looking out at the first fires of the Spring Festival. I’d heaved open the window to release one of my sentinels back to the Wood and then I’d stayed there, with the window left open, feeling the damp touch of the air on my skin. It was milder now, thick with the scent of fresh rain and wet earth. Life, so at odds to the lingering death that hung over my tower. I could even smell the faint scent of the smoke from Olshanka and hear the barest hint of music and raised voices on the wind. It made me think of Midwinter, and the way Agnieszka had stared so longingly out at the candlelit trees.

It was then that I heard her, the muffled sounds of her sobs coming from the library. I closed the window with a dull _thud_ and then crept back onto the landing. I hesitated on the threshold, every gasp making my wretched heart ache. I wanted to go to her, but I had no notion of what I could do. Nothing I could give her would offer her any comfort. I kept being drawn back to the same thought: should I end this? Would she thank me – if I slipped away, did the deed and told her it was over? And yet every time I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.

In the end, I couldn’t stay away from her.

She was bent over her arms, her face hidden, so that all I could see was a shuddering mass of brown curls. Each sob shook her whole body, as if months of anguish were finally forcing their way up and out of her. She didn’t hear me approach or notice when I set the handkerchief down next to her, small and square and inadequate. I wanted to reach for her, to offer her something – anything. I almost did, my pale, bony fingers less than an inch from her shoulder, but I stopped myself. What would that serve? I was only trying to appease myself, make it feel like I could do anything to comfort her. Instead, I sat quietly by her side, half a foot away from her, though it might as well have been a mile. I gazed out of the window, seeing nothing and listening to her cry, my hands carefully folded in my lap.

When at last she stirred, I still couldn’t bring myself to look her, lest I lose my resolve to speak. I heard her shift, reach for the handkerchief, wipe her face.

‘I tried, once,’ I said, quickly, before I could stop myself. ‘When I was a young man. I lived in the capital, then. There was a woman—’ I felt the sharp stab of shame as keenly as I had a century and more ago; it was hard to look back on the fool I had been and not despise him. ‘The foremost beauty of the court, naturally. I suppose there’s no harm anymore in saying her name now she’s forty years in the grave…’ Though it was still harder than I expected. ‘Countess Ludmilla.’

Some of the images had lost their sharpness, but the feelings had not; I was surprised to find I could remember a number of them with alarming clarity. I suppose this was another door Agnieszka had opened, whether she meant to or not.

When I looked back to her, I found her staring open-mouthed at me, still managing to look startled at my humanity, even after everything else. She studied my face without mercy, trying to imagine it youthful or foolish or in love, I suppose. I dread to think what she saw there.

‘She— became corrupted?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no.’ I almost laughed – maybe that would have been simpler. ‘Not her. Her husband.’

Ludmila. I’d locked even her name away, buried it as if that would allow me to deny its existence. But these things only put down roots, like something of the Wood, exerting their influence from a place we can no longer see. I still remember how it felt to see her come towards me. I’d had no doubts in my mind: why shouldn’t she admire me? The greatest wizard to be named to the list in generations. I’d been all poisonous pride, still imagining that my gifts would be revered, that my power was worthy of admiration. When the most beautiful woman at court had made me the object of her desire, I did not question it for a moment, smiling with pity at those who had tried to warn me.

I could still hear the low whisper of her voice as she had asked me to save her husband. We’d been next to the fire in her drawing room. Scandalous that I was even there, of course, and we were far too close – her whole body angled towards mine. I can remember it so clearly: the spit and crackle of the logs, the way she slipped off her shoes so I could see the gentle curve of her feet, her pale skin bathed golden in the warm light. Her eyes shone, like glowing embers – and in my memory I can see her grief so clearly, even as I’ve forgotten the details of her face.

I hadn’t seen it then, of course: I’d been too preoccupied by the closeness of her, the crook of her fingers on the stem of a wineglass. I wonder now if I added her expression in later, painting that grief over a shadow of a memory.

‘My dear Sarkan,’ she’d leaned forward as she’d said my name, a hand carefully placed on my arm – every gesture a calculation. ‘You know I cannot leave him like this. And who else can I turn to? No other wizard could help him – he’s beyond the help of any lesser enchanter. I need _you_.’

Even in remembrance, I still couldn’t make myself look at my own actions, superimpose them with the knowledge that they had only been endured, and not – well. But I could not forget the day she led me to the cellar, to show me what dwelled down there in the dark. A servant had drawn back the thick bolts, scattered salt across the threshold and pushed open the creaking door, before scurrying away as quickly as his legs would take him.

The _thing_ waiting inside had cackled with such cruelty, hurling itself against its chains, no regard for the integrity of its host – trying to break it, in fact. But it stilled when it saw me, its eyes lit with a strange delight. It was only then that I realised the horror of the corruption, the savagery of it. I hadn’t been prepared for it: the empty laughter, the gaze which seemed to stare right through me – down to the darkest, most jealous parts of me. Ludmila had stood to one side, so quiet and still, and I had imagined myself shielding her from it, saving her from the foul gaze of that rotten creature. I was her rescuer: a storied hero who would free her from the honourable chains which bound her to him.

I do believe that song turned out quite differently.

‘I spent half a year trying,’ I said, though it had felt like far longer. ‘I was already accounted the most powerful wizard of Polnya by then; I was certain there was nothing I couldn’t do. I ransacked the king’s library and the university, and brewed a score of remedies.’ I gestured with disdain towards Jaga’s spellbook. ‘That was when I bought that book, among other less wise attempts.’

I have no idea if this story of my folly was a comfort to Agnieszka. I meant it to be: to show her that she was not alone, that I too had tried and failed, though for arguably far worse reasons. I’d been talking almost without thinking, the words dropping out of my mouth like stones, each one making me lighter. I don’t think I had ever told this story, not in all these long years.

I couldn’t read the expression on Agnieszka’s face; she was quieter than I had ever seen her. Where before she had barrelled into me, pushing me always, now she met me exactly where I stood, listening without judgement.

When it got to the part where I had come to the tower, to the Raven, I almost stopped. I thought perhaps Agnieszka had heard enough of my failings for a lifetime, but it was this part that she needed to hear the most. I admit, I omitted a great deal: I did not tell her the way I had sneered at the entrance hall of the tower, looking down my nose at it the exact way Prince Marek had looked at me; I did not tell her how I had eyed the Raven with a pitying kind of contempt. I remember her face clearer than Ludmila’s, perhaps because it was everything I had feared. Her black hair had thinned and turned to grey, her dark eyes sunken within skin which wore its age in deep winkles and translucent blue veins. She was obscurity and oblivion, everything that I reviled, and I had no desire to be dragged into her pointless war.

I heard the desperation in her voice when she asked me to stay. She could see her own death as clearly as I could, and she knew – as I do now – what would happen when the occupant of the tower fell. I ignored her. When she could give me no answer to my problem, I deemed her weak. Her power was failing: I could see it in the cracks in the tower, some of the wide enough that I could have fit my hand inside them. Would that I had seen the other cracks, as well.

Porosna was gone by the time the messenger had reached me. A whole town swallowed because I had been too proud to listen to her, too conceited to stay.

‘The Wood— took it?’ Agnieszka whispered, bringing me back to the present.

I stood and reached for the ledger, heaving it down onto the table in front of us. I flicked back through the thick pages, past column after column of names. _Seven dead, three taken, two cured._ I flipped backwards through time, past all the people I had failed to save, watching the lines spread out, the numbers growing smaller – until finally we reached the Raven’s handwriting.

‘It swallowed Porosna the night the Raven died,’ I said.

Agnieszka leaned forward, studying the page, reaching out her hand as if she could touch the author of those words.

_Today a rider from Porosna_.

‘So far as I could learn,’ I continued, watching as Agnieszka wrapped her arms around herself, ‘—afterward – a frantic messenger caught me on the road – she went to Porosona, taking her stores with her, and wore herself out healing the sick. That, of course, was when the Wood struck. She managed to fling a handful of children to the next town – I imagine your baker’s grandmother was among them. They told a story of seven walkers coming, carrying a seedling heart tree.’

The Raven had still been alive when I’d found her; somehow, I made it through the trees which had marched over Porosna, and which now loomed towards Zatochek. I don’t remember much of that journey, but I do remember _her_ – the way the roots of the heart tree had knotted _through_ her, the bark creeping up and over her face. I had killed her as swiftly and as mercifully as I could.

‘That was the last great incursion,’ I said, breathing out the words like I was exhaling poison. ‘I halted the advance by taking her place, and I’ve held it since then – more or less. But it’s always trying.’

‘And if you hadn’t come?’ Agnieszka asked.

‘I’m the only wizard in Polnya strong enough to hold it back. Every few years it tests my strength, and once a decade or so makes a serious attempt – like this last assault on your own village. Dvernik is only one village out from the edge of the Wood. If it had managed to kill or corrupt me there, and establish a heart tree – by the time another wizard came, the Wood would have swallowed up both your village and Zatochek, and been on the doorstep of the eastern pass to the Yellow Marshes. And it would continue on from there if given the chance.’

Agnieszka had saved more than she realised, the night she had cured me of corruption.

There was a long silence between us. Tears slid silently down Agnieszka’s cheeks, while I – I felt strangely empty, hollowed out. My thoughts were scattered, like floating fragments pulled this way and that by opposing currents. The Wood, Ludmila, the Raven. Agnieszka.

I was lost on a sea of memory when Agnieszka spoke again. ‘What happened to them? What happened to her?’

‘Who?’ I blinked and shook myself, feeling like I’d surfaced from beneath water. ‘Oh, Ludmila?’

I hesitated, unsure she’d want to hear this particular part of the tale, but what good would hiding the truth do either of us?

I spared her the details, though they were clear enough in my mind. To my shame, it is not the Duke’s death that stood out in my memory, nor even being paraded before the king like some common criminal.

No, what I remember is the shriek which ripped out of Ludmila’s throat when I told her we must put her husband to death – the way she’d launched at me, and I’d had to grab her wrists to keep her from clawing at my face. I remember the exact moment the illusion between us shattered. I’d been exhausted and raw from what I’d seen at Porosna: numb, or so I’d thought. Every one of her words had landed like a physical blow; she’d left me no room to hide, offered my pride no quarter. Perhaps I should be grateful to her for that, at least. When I’d come at last to the tower, I’d been eager for its solitude, had greeted its cracked walls and dusty rooms with relief.

I tried to find some feeling for Ludmila now – regret, affection, anger even – but there was nothing there. She was dead and gone, and it was all so long ago.

‘I believe the bards at court made me the villain of the piece,’ I said, the lightness of my voice sounding false to my own ears. ‘And her the noble faithful wife, trying to save her husband at any cost.’ I sighed. ‘Not even false, I suppose.’

I saw Agnieszka’s eyes widen just a little at that – she’d heard the song, it seemed.

We’d come to the end of my story, and so the girl had finally run out of time; there was no putting the question off any longer.

‘Are you ready to let her go?’ I asked.

I watched the feelings wrestle across Agnieszka’s face. She looked down at clenched fists, her eyes shining, her mouth pressed into a thin and determined line. I almost thought I could feel the shudder of her power, as if it too wrestled with the thought of letting Kasia go. She made one last, desperate glance around the library, as if some truth would come forward from its hiding place. Instead of answering me, she got unsteadily to her feet and drifted towards the bookshelves. She reached out to them with a ghostly hand, her fingers trailing lightly across the covers, and for the first time I really saw it: her gleaning in the forest, setting her feet upon some trail that only she could see.

She hovered by _Luthe’s Summoning,_ our old nemesis. ‘What does it summon? A demon?’

‘No, don’t be absurd.’ I was snapped back to reality by her inane question, annoyed that I’d been taken in by her nonsense. ‘Calling spirits is nothing but charlatanry. It’s very easy to claim you’ve summoned something that’s invisible and incorporeal. The _Summoning_ does nothing so trivial. It summons—’ and then I stopped, because there was no real word for what the _Summoning_ did. ‘Truth,’ I said in the end, though the word was wildly inadequate.

‘But why were you so angry that I had started reading it then,’ she snapped, turning on me with an incredulous expression, as if keeping her from destroying us and the tower had been a completely outrageous action.

‘Does that seem to you a trivial working?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows. ‘I thought you’d been set on to an impossible task by some other enchanter at court – with the intention, on their part, of blasting the roof off the tower when you’d spent all your strength and your working fell in on itself, and thereby making me look an incompetent fool not to be trusted with an apprentice.’ It had never occurred to me that she might succeed, but there was a part of me that was beginning to wonder.

She made some noises about the cost of her life, as if the gentry of Polnya would think of a peasant girl’s life as anything more than currency; the humiliation of a wizard, and perhaps me most of all, weighed heavily on those scales.

She chose to ignore my comment about the value of cattle and instead turned to lift the book off the shelf, clutching _Luthe’s_ _Summoning_ to her chest as if it were some treasured childhood toy and not the most difficult working in this library. I had the distinct sensation that the ground was disappearing out from beneath my feet.

‘Could it help Kasia?’ she asked.

I opened my mouth to tell her to stop being ridiculous, and then I shut it again, my eyes drawn to the golden lettering half hidden behind her arms. ‘I doubt it. But the _Summoning_ is— a strange work.’

‘It can’t hurt anything,’ she said.

I felt my anger prickle up hotly inside me – it was as if any reference to danger just immediately fell out of her head. ‘Certainly it can hurt. Didn’t you listen to what I just said? The entire book must be invoked in a single sitting to make the spell, and if you haven’t the strength to do it, the whole edifice of the spell will collapse, disastrously, when you exhaust yourself. I’ve seen it cast only once, by three witches together, each having taught the next younger, passing the book from one to another to read. It almost killed them, and they were by no means weak.’

She looked down at the book in her hands, her brow wrinkled, her face the most hopeful I had seen it since that cursed woman had appeared on our doorstep. ‘Will you cast it with me?’

My heart dipped and lurched in my chest. For a moment, I could feel the breath of her magic again, the way it had raced away with us both as our powers had combined. I felt my cheeks grow hot and my throat go dry, and against every sensible thought in my head, I knew what my answer would be.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my goodness, sorry it's so unpolished/unedited. It's 1am and I am just hitting 'post' because I can't see straight anymore.
> 
> xxx


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